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Carol Shirley

Carol successfully counsels adults, adolescents, families in a wide range of areas including anxiety, depression, grief, loss and adjustment issues. Carol is experienced in facilitating behavioral changes in children and adolescents, reducing sibling rivalry, enhancing low self-esteem and finding alternatives to aggressive or acting-out behavior. Carol also helps both children and parents cope with the turmoil of divorce, the challenge of single parenting and softening the turmoil associated with moving to a new home or community. Carols works with parents who are seeking to improve the communication, conflict resolution and/or discipline skills. Through all of this, her gentle, accepting and sensitive manner helps make the learning and counselling process feel safe. Carol is skilled in workshops or topics such as anxiety, depression, grief/loss, learning disabilities, assertiveness, and stress reduction both generally and in the workplace. Carol is experienced in conducting, analyzing and utilizing psycho-educational aptitude and educational tests. Her work often goes beyond merely identifying attitude or achievement levels as Carol’s findings determine the manner in which the student most readily takes in and processes information. By identifying this, Carol can then help students, parents and educators to construct an efficient approach that enhances the student’s educational achievement by custom- building a strategy and approach that maximizes learning success. Whenever appropriate, Carol is comfortable going to the school and directly communicating her findings to the teachers and resource teacher. Furthermore, her availability doesn’t end when the assessment and meetings are completed. As the year progresses, Carol can serve as an advocate for the student and bridge any misunderstanding between parent, teacher and student. This follow-through is critically important to minimize the chance of misunderstanding, labeling, frustration, acting-out behavior and ultimately long-term failure and deeply entrenched negative self-esteem.